So, football fever for another four years? Well, not quite, as our Harry recalls his stint in the royal box at Wembley after a cup final 20 years ago ...

WITH the World Cup now over, football should fade for the next few weeks but yesterday I saw, on TV, a shot of Wembley and a memory flooded back.

It was the occasion I organised the cup presentation from the royal box after a League Cup Final between Notts Forest and Wolves some 20 years ago.

About a dozen of us coppers had been on duty behind the Wolverhampton goal. Once the game is done, the crowd has left and the floodlights are out, there is little for police to do on the terraces. Usually we would move outside to assist colleagues to speed away the traffic.

However, there was an obstacle to this a superintendent with a personal radio. In those early days of radio, giving one to a super was like giving your granny a Ferrari the character changes.

No matter how smoothly things were going, superintendents with a radio would feel a compulsion to change them, so the last thing any experienced copper would do is announce his availability. We decided it was time to do a security wander around the deserted stadium. Along the royal box was a wall of flowers and WPC Ann Jones began plucking them.

Suddenly a Brummie voice pierced the darkness: "'Ere mate, who won?"

I turned to see two men with Wolverhampton rosettes. No explanation was needed, their eyes told it all. They were drunk and had missed the game! "Your lot lost," said a colleague, cruelly.

"Well, can we touch those steps?" asked the drunk pointing to the flight to the royal box.

"You can do better than that," I replied and led both men to the top, turned left and approached the royal seats. I stepped over the wall then reached back and shook their hands while Ann gave each some carnations and told them to wave to the crowd. Three cheers broke out from our colleagues below.

"My daughter is a year old," said the first drunk, "and she ain't ever goin' ter fergit this moment."

That baby must now be in her early 20s. I wonder if she has forgiven her dad?

July 8, 2002 17:00